You can now read Wikipedia in Turkey.
While many will take the ability to use the service as a given, residents in Turkey haven’t had access to Wikipedia for the past two years.
However, just this week Turkey’s highest court ruled that the ban on Wikipedia violated its citizens’ freedom of expression.
Access to Wikipedia was allowed yesterday after Turkey’s Constitutional Court made its judgement. Access to the site was previously blocked under a law which enables the authorities to prohibit websites that it deems to present a security threat.
Wikipedia declined to eliminate content on the site, on the basis of censorship. It petitioned the Constitutional Court after discussions with officials in May 2017 broke down.
Turkey has a bad record on suppression and censorship of free speech, which intensified after a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government in 2016.
Tens of thousands of individuals were detained or dismissed from government jobs and tens of thousands of civil society groups or press organizations were closed in a clampdown in the wake of the coup effort.
Thousands of other websites remain blocked. In 2008, Turkey banned access to YouTube.
That said, many Turks have found ways to bypass the ban on Wikipedia and other sites that were blocked.
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